NFT Marketplace Blur Launches Blend, a Peer-to-Peer Lending Platform

Non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace Blur said Monday it’s rolling out a peer-to-peer NFT lending protocol.

Called Blend, short for Blur Lending, the platform is intended to allow traders to maximize NFT liquidity by allowing buyers to put up collateral for their token purchases. This will enable new buyers to enter the ecosystem who were previously priced out of expensive collections like Bored Ape Yacht Club and CryptoPunk NFTs.

Just as home buyers put a down payment on a property and then pay a mortgage, Blur said Blend will allow collectors to apply the same principles to NFT markets – they can put up a percentage of the full NFT price and finance the remaining balance.

Blur posted a Twitter thread sharing the details of the product, explaining how the product will help open opportunities for lenders and borrowers seeking to enter the market.

“Every trillion dollar market relies on financialization to scale,” said Blur in a tweet. “Many may want to buy into a collection, but very few can afford to pay it all at once. The solution is NFT lending.”

Blur said the product was created in collaboration with Dan Robinson, head of research at venture capital firm Paradigm and investor in decentralized exchange (DEX) Uniswap version (v)3, alongside pseudonymous research associate Transmissions, who has previously contributed to building the marketplace protocol Seaport. Paradigm is the lead investor in Blur.

According to the thread, Blend will have no fees for traders or lenders, pushing the Blur brand further into the world of decentralized finance (DeFi).

“Blend is a flexible and permissionless floating-rate lending protocol that can support arbitrary collateral with no oracle dependencies, and allows whatever interest rates and loan-to-value ratios the market will bear,” reads the Blend white paper. “We're excited to see how people use it!”

Blend comes to Blur near the end of Season 2, the airdrop period of $300 million worth of its native BLUR token. According to data from Dune Analytics, while Blur has held its spot as leading NFT marketplace for the past several months, aggregate NFT trading volumes have declined in the past weeks.